Judge tosses US suit against federal judiciary in Maryland, saying he can't license 'constitutional free-for-all'
A federal judge on Tuesday ticked off three reasons why the Trump administration can’t sue the Maryland federal court and its judges over standing orders that automatically pause the deportation of detained immigrants who file habeas petitions.
U.S. District Judge Thomas T. Cullen of the Western District of Virginia tossed the Department of Justice’s lawsuit because the government lacked standing, the defendants are immune from suit, and the federal government did not identify a legitimate cause of action that allows it to sue.
“An allegation by one branch that another has encroached on its constitutional prerogative is undoubtedly serious,” wrote Cullen, who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term. But one branch’s alleged infringement of another’s power “does not license a constitutional free-for-all” in which a court can rule without jurisdiction, he said in the Aug. 26 decision.
Any fair reading of precedent “leads to the ineluctable conclusion that this court has no alternative but to dismiss,” Cullen wrote. “To hold otherwise would run counter to overwhelming precedent, depart from longstanding constitutional tradition, and offend the rule of law.”
U.S. District Judge Thomas T. Cullen of the Western District of Virginia in March 2018—when he was a U.S. attorney. (Photo by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of Virginia, PD US DOJ, via Wikimedia Commons)
The standing orders in Maryland federal court automatically pause deportations for two business days after a habeas petition is filed. The orders “effectively borrowed from the playbook” of many federal appeals courts that temporarily stay removals when detainees seek review of decisions by the DOJ’s Board of Immigration Appeals, Cullen said.
The plaintiffs—the United States and the Department of Homeland Security— “nevertheless took umbrage” at the actions of Maryland’s chief federal judge, who adopted the standing order, according to Cullen. Their June 24 suit named the chief judge as the lead defendant and added “ostensibly for good measure” every other judge in the district, the clerk of the court and the court itself, Cullen said.
Cullen was hearing the case because the entire federal bench in Maryland recused themselves.
The administration’s suit maintained that the standing orders are inconsistent with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure because they automatically award injunctive relief to a special class of litigants, they are beyond the power of the courts, and they violate local procedures governing local rules of court.
“Fair enough, as far as it goes,” Cullen wrote. “If these arguments were made in the proper forum, they might well get some traction.”
The usual route for raising such concerns would be to challenge the orders as applied to a particular habeas proceeding through a direct appeal to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Richmond, Virginia, he said.
But these are not normal times, Cullen said. It is no surprise that the executive branch chose a “more confrontational” path when it sued, he said. He explained in a footnote that cited executive officials’ “unprecedented and unfortunate” criticisms of federal judges, including allegations that they are “rogue,” “unhinged,” “left-wing” and “crooked.”
If he had ruled differently and allowed the case to proceed, Cullen said, executive officials and judges “would potentially be required to sit for depositions and produce documents.” That would almost certainly trigger claims of privilege that would “invariably compound this constitutional standoff into epic proportions,” he said.
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